Why You Can’t Stay Lean When You Get Off Your Structured Diet

We have all heard of The Atkins diet, The Warrior Diet, The Paleo Diet and every other nutritional plan that promises to burn fat, build muscle, and allow you to achieve your physique related goals with minimal effort.

They make big promises, sound good in practice, but fail to deliver. Even if you do reach your goal, after you discontinue the diet, the fat piles right back on and you are back where you started.

What a waste of time.

Why does this happen?

It’s really simple. The proverb “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” comes to mind…

When you are following one of these predesigned diet plans, you aren’t really thinking for yourself. You are taking a generic set of recommendations that the author tries to apply to a very diverse group of people and hope it works for you. Different people have different bodies and different needs – why would one set of instructions work for everyone?

Lets have a look at low carb/Atkins style diets….

In the Atkins diet, there aren’t any concrete caloric recommendations – you are supposed to eat to satiety. The idea is that since you are eating a lot of fat, you will feel full a lot sooner and will naturally eat fewer calories. This may work for some people, but it can cause problems for others. (Especially people who are already lean, are looking to reach very low levels of body fat, and will no doubt run into Leptin and NPY issues in short order.) There just isn’t enough information included in the standard diet plan to make the information useful in this situation.

But, if you had a simple understanding of nutritional fundamentals like calorie counting, basic nutrient partitioning and know how to adapt your diet to fit your specific situation, you could achieve a great level of success.

This is not to say that some of the most popular diet programs around are a total waste of your time – quite the contrary, actually. The fundamental principles behind them are solid and quite effective – you just need to know how to apply them in the best manner possible.

What is the take home message?

In the end, your diet will only be as successful as the fundamental knowledge you have on the topic. In a perfect world, people would be able to read a short book, apply the recommendations and maintain 10% body fat for the rest of their life. This just isn’t the case though.

If you learn the fundamental concepts of nutrition and know how to apply them in your every day life, you will be able to achieve the body you have always dreamt of with relative ease. You will be able to eat the foods you want, when you want, and will be able to design your own diets that fit your specific needs with ease. There is nothing wrong with reading books and learning about all the various predesigned diets currently available, but if you want the results you desire, you need to think for yourself!

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